Emergency Landing
by wickedsingularity
Summary: [One-shot] On the way home from a conference, and just a few hours before Jim's birthday, their shuttlepod hits an ion storm.


"I'm looking forward to a nice, long sonic shower and a night in my own bed," I said as I altered our course a fraction, hoping it would shave a few minutes off our estimated travel time.

"Me too," Jim agreed. "The temperature in that hall was awful."

Jim and I had been to a conference on Tellar Prime about advancement in warp drives and the impact it has on the Prime Directive. Scotty decided it was better to send his assistant chief engineer instead of going himself, and when Jim told me Starfleet made him go too because of his tendency to disregard the Prime Directive and to act as a buffer between the Tellarites and Andorians if necessary, I didn't hesitate to agree to go in Scotty's place. It hadn't been a vacation by any means. Jim off in diplomatic meetings with other species' captains and representatives and me attending one lecture after another, speaking to the best engineers and professors currently available in the Federation. But we attended a few lectures together, and it was nice to travel somewhere with him and relax in a giant bed in a luxurious hotel rather than the smaller and harder Starfleet beds.

The Tellarites liked temperatures a lot warmer than what us humans were used to on a regular basis. It made me sticky and sweaty and I felt like a magnet for all the dust and dirt in the environment there. Though I had taken a water shower every day, nothing really felt as cleansing as a sonic one.

"How long until we reach our rendezvous point?" Jim asked, swivelling his chair around.

I swiped the panel in front of me. "Three hours twenty-six minutes."

"Too long to wait to eat." Jim got up and I heard him rummage around in a compartment for rations. "Do you want meatloaf with peas and mashed potatoes or deconstructed fish tacos?"

I frowned, checking the sensors, I thought I saw something. "That's all the options?"

"Sadly, yes. We need to restock."

"Let's have the meatloaf then." I couldn't see anything on the sensors, deciding it had been Tellarite dust in my eyes. "Warm it up for me?"

"If you activate the autopilot and come back here and eat with me, sweetheart." He already had one ration warmed up.

I took one last glance at the long-range sensors, still finding nothing, and then activated the autopilot. The second ration was done, and Jim set them up on the seat next to him along with two bottles of water. "One last dinner date before duty calls?" I asked.

He looked up and threw me that blinding smile of his. "Something like that."

I sat down on the other side of the two lightly steaming bowls of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. "Real romantic. In a dull shuttlepod. Dirty and sweaty. With rations and stale water."

"Computer, play some slow jazz." There was a beep, and then the sound of a slow and soothing saxophone filled the shuttlepod. "Better?"

I leaned over to give him a quick kiss. "It was already perfect because I'm with you."

"Trying to get in my pants, Lieutenant?"

"I don't have to _try_ to get in your pants, Captain." Raising one eyebrow, I reached for my bowl and fork and took a bite, swallowing with a scowl. "Need to install replicators in our shuttlepods. The new shuttlepod classes are getting them, so why not."

"The captain approves of this idea." Jim too picked sceptically at his meatloaf.

Even if the food wasn't all that good, it was still full of nutrients and we dug in, talking about the conference, the jazz in the background. It was as romantic as it could get in a small shuttlepod. Until suddenly the entire craft tilted, the emergency lights started blinking red, and a klaxon replaced the music. What little was left of my food covered the back of the seat I banged into and Jim's bowl clattered to the floor.

We both scrambled to our feet, the craft tilting to the other side, and we grabbed onto whatever we could to make it to the controls. I plopped down in the seat and there was definitely something on sensors now.

"Ion storm," I said, raising my voice over the sound of the red alert. "A big one."

"Shields at 70 percent," Jim said. "Warp engine is offline. Impulse engine is online. Life support on auxiliary power." The shuttlepod began shaking violently. "Shields at 57 percent. 40 percent. We need to land!"

"There's a planet about four and a half million kilometres away. Uninhabited. Class P."

"Rerouting power to the shields, laying in course."

The twenty-minute flight was long. We cleared the ion storm after seven minutes and was able to drop the shields and save what little power was left, but the warp engines would not come back online, and impulse engines were hanging on by a thread. Life support would not last us until we reached the rendezvous point. I had already sent out a general distress call and was trying to hail the Enterprise while Jim tried his best to keep the engines online long enough to reach the planet. If we could at least get into the atmosphere, gravity would pull us down and we could use thrusters to hopefully bring us to a not too disastrous landing.

"Reaching atmosphere in two minutes," Jim announced.

"Shields are up."

"Brace yourself."

The shuttlepod rattled and shook, it's nose tilting more and more forward until we were hurtling through the atmosphere like a flaming arrow.

"Hull temperature rising," I warned. "Nearing critical. Rerouting life support to shields."

"Almost there!"

Sweat was dripping down my nose from the heat inside the pod. I kept my eyes locked on the shields and temperature levels, not even knowing what more power I could give to the shields to keep us from burning up. But just as I thought I would faint from the heat, we cleared the atmosphere and saw the icy and snowy surface coming closer and closer. The shuttlepod stopped rattling, and I began scanning for a good place to land. Not that we had much to say in the way of navigating, impulse engines were completely dead now.

"Try to land here," I said, entering a set of coordinates for Jim to navigate after.

He activated the thrusters, but it felt like they did nothing. "I'll just try and slow us down as much as I can wherever this piece of metal decides to go."

The surface was coming closer and closer. I knew it was a matter of seconds, but it felt like an eternity before Jim managed to get the pod a bit more horizontal just before it crashed into the snow and hurtled forwards. It sounded like the hull was being pulled apart and I was thrown back and forth and side to side and then –

Silence.

* * *

It was cold. So cold. A shiver ran through me. Everything hurt. I opened my eyes and blinked a few times. Then I carefully pushed myself up from the console with a pained groan. I took a moment to take stock of my body, moving my limbs a little bit. Nothing seemed broken, but I would definitely be colourful with various bruises in a bit. Something on my forehead was stinging though, and I touched my fingers to it. They came away red with almost dry blood.

"Jim?" My voice was croaky. I looked around and saw him hanging sideways over the arm of the chair, unconscious. Ignoring the pain _everywhere_ and shivering from the cold and my heart beating hard at seeing Jim like that, I got up and stepped over, checking his pulse. A breath of relief left me. His pulse was strong if a bit slow. Carefully, I moved him into a sitting position and laid my hands on his cold cheeks. No blood on his face, thankfully, or anywhere else that I could see. "Jim?" No response. "Jim! Wake up!"

He inhaled sharply and his eyes blinked. I immediately planted a kiss on his forehead and laughed a bit hysterically.

"You okay?" he asked, closing his eyes again.

I sat down on the console in front of him. "Apart from a few bumps and bruises, yeah. What about you? Anything broken?"

"Doesn't feel like it." He looked at me and sat straighter, alarm in his blue eyes. "You're bleeding!"

I touched my hand to my forehead again and noticed that whatever was there had started bleeding again. I hadn't even felt the fresh blood run down my face as I was waking Jim. "I guess I am."

"Don't move." Jim stood up, winced a bit and then went straight to the compartment with the medkits. I looked around as he did. The front windows were cracked, the bulkhead was dented on the entire right side of the pod as if we had scraped a pointy piece of rock. Many compartments had opened and rations and equipment laid scattered.

Jim came back again, holding his side, and put the medkit down on the console next to me. He pulled out a piece of gauze, cleaning up some of the blood, before picking up a dermal regenerator for the wound. With every move he made, there was a pained frown on his face and he did most of the work with his left arm, but I didn't say anything as I felt the wound closing up, stinging less and less. He then pulled out a medical tricorder, but I pushed his hands away.

"No need for that, I'm fine now. But you're in pain." I moved to lift his shirt, but he pushed my hands away now.

"Just a bruise, from bumping around in the chair probably. It'll be fine. We need to get our bearings and warm up before we freeze to death."

My teeth had indeed started to chatter. "Right. And set up an automated distress call. Enterprise will have realised we're not going to show up by now and start looking."

Both of us moved a bit hesitantly at first, the cold slowed us down. I tried to find some power to send out a distress call, but everything was completely dead. Jim was pulling out emergency kits, tossing a thermal jacket my way before donning one himself.

"I think we should move out and try to find a cave. There's got to be one. Can't start a fire in here," he said, putting the rest of the rations in a backpack.

"Okay. I'm going to detach the distress beacon and take it with us. See if I can get it working."

Soon, we had packed everything we needed, holstered our phasers and donned the headlamps, wrestled the door open and faced the icy, windy and dark night. We both pulled out tricorders and Jim decided on a course. "This way, I think."

The trek was long and it was made slow by having to move through ten inches of snow. Our boots and pants were not suited for this environment and I felt my toes grow colder and colder with each step. The cold wind made my cheeks and eyes sting, tears falling and almost freezing on my skin. While the cold also made me feel less pain from all my bumps and bruises, I noticed Jim sometimes stiffened up and favoured his right side, his hands rubbing at the side of his stomach. I knew better than to ask about it right now, it would have to wait until we found shelter. And about an hour of walking later, a cave finally appeared in front of us.

"No life forms inside," he shouted over the wind and looked at me, cocking his head toward the mouth of the cave as if inviting me into his house.

I nodded, and we walked inside. The sting of the wind disappeared and the further in we got, the fainter the sound became. Only a faint howling in the distance. I looked around for something to use as kindling as we ventured deeper, but there was nothing but icicles and rocks, the cave just as barren as the landscape.

"I think this is deep enough," I said, coming to a stop, looking down at my tricorder. "Any further and the beacon will be out of range."

Jim agreed and we began setting our things down and wiping snow off ourselves. Then I ordered him to sit down.

"I've seen you wince in pain too many times now, let me look at you." I glared at him in that way I knew he understood it was pointless to argue. I knelt in front of him and lifted his shirt. His entire right side was a flower field of bruises. I gently touched him right below the chest and he shied away with a gasp. "Right. If that's not a broken rib, I don't know what is. You get started on this instead, and I'll get us warm." I dumped the beacon in front of him.

"Bossy," Jim mumbled as I rummaged around in his bag for a pain reliever. When I approached him with the hypospray, his playful grin fell. "No."

"Yes." And before he could get away from behind the beacon and move, I pressed the hypospray to his neck.

"Thanks," he then said a few seconds later, as I'm sure some of the pain went away.

I nodded and started to gather some rocks to warm up with my phaser. And then I took the beacon from Jim and continued trying to fix the damage. Jim moved over to the so-called fire and silence filled the cave.

When my hands were so cold I couldn't feel the textural difference between a metal screw and a piece of fabric, I finally got the beacon to power up. I set it to transmit the same distress call we had sent out earlier and wandered over to Jim who held out a water bottle for me.

"Warm up a bit, sweetheart. All we can do now is try to keep warm and wait."

I took a large swig from the bottle and then sat down next to him with my boots as close to the rocks as possible. Jim laid his arm around me and pulled me closer to his uninjured side. Even though he was probably almost as cold as I was, he made me feel warmer, and I leaned my head on his shoulder, rubbing my hands together.

"How's the rib?"

"Still there. But not as painful. Thank you." He kissed the top of my head.

"I can't believe our stupid shuttlepod broke down just a few damn hours before your birthday," I muttered. "On a class P planet."

"That's my birthday for you, it's jinxed." Jim chuckled and winced in pain.

I blew him a raspberry. "It's not jinxed, dumbass. But I had the chef prepare a birthday dinner for when we got back. I bet Bones and Spock are enjoying it instead right now. And gloating."

"You had him prepare for the entire crew? Were you going to throw me a surprise party? You know how I feel about those."

"No. Just you and me. You said we were going to be off duty when we got back and I wanted to pretend to have a normal birthday for you. Shit just seemed to happen every year before this, something always came up. I was so sure this year would be quiet and uneventful."

"Told you it was jinxed. It could have been worse, though. There could have been drakoulias here."

I blew him a raspberry again before silence fell over us. The day was catching up to me, and I felt drowsy. My head dropped down and I started, making Jim chuckle and wince in pain again. But he got up and pulled out the two thermal blankets we had in the backpack and held one out to me.

"Get some rest. I'll keep watch, just in case."

"It's uninhabited. No life forms. It would be safe for you to rest too. And it looks like you need another hypospray," I protested, but I was already settling down on the cold ground and pulling the blanket over me.

Jim moved the distress beacon closer, wrapped the second blanket around himself like a cape, sat down next to the beacon and laid his communicator on the ground. Then he spread his legs, waving me over. I crawled over and settled between his them, using his thigh as a pillow and draped the blanket over myself and his legs. "Just in case. And in case Enterprise hails us. And it feels like I'm better off sitting. Sleep, love. I'll wake you if I need to rest too."

Feeling the heat from Jim creep into me and his fingers gently combing through my hair, I fell asleep quickly. But it was a restless sleep and I woke up what felt like every other minute, feeling colder and colder every time. At one point, I felt Jim shivering slightly. I looked up and saw his head had fallen back to the cave wall, eyes closed and mouth open.

I sat up carefully, trying not to wake him and reached for my phaser to stun the rocks again. Jim blue eyes were open a fraction when I turned back to him. "You're shivering and your lips are turning blue. Please take another hypospray and lie down with me," I ordered.

He didn't even hesitate. He bent his head back and let me press the pain reliever to his neck and then we laid on top of my blanket and wrapped our limbs around each other, and I pulled his blanket tight around us.

"You sleep now, and I'll stay awake."

Again, he didn't even hesitate. He pressed a pair of ice-cold lips to mine, then nuzzled into my neck.

I don't how long I managed to stay awake for, or how long I had been asleep when a sound invaded my consciousness and pulled me back to the cave. Footsteps were coming closer. I was distracted for a fraction of a second of Jim shivering and breathing raggedly next to me, but the echoing sound of a tumbling rock made me grab the phaser lying near my head and hold it towards the mouth of the cave, desperately whispering for Jim to wake up.

Whoever or whatever was coming, came with bright lights that blinded me. "Who's there?" I called out.

"No need to point your phaser at us, Lieutenant."

"Sulu?"

"To the rescue!"

The light was close enough now that I could see Spock, Sulu and Bones. The latter took in the scene in front of him for a second, then strode over with the medical tricorder already out. "Figures that the two of you managed to crash-land on a deserted planet and almost freeze to death while just flying home from a damn conference."

I untangled myself from Jim's trembling arms, and that finally made him open his eyes. "Check him first," I said to the doctor. "Please."

Sulu and Spock came over and helped Jim sit up. Though he was awake, he didn't seem very conscious of what was happening around him and he looked like he was too cold to notice the broken rib. Bones ran the tricorder up and down his body, a frown on his face. I knelt next to them, too worried about how much he was shivering and how blue his lips were.

"His temperature is at 30 Celsius. And he's got a number of bruises and a broken rib and frostbites. We need to get him to sickbay immediately."

Spock whipped out his communicator. "Spock to Enterprise."

" _Did you find them?_ " Uhura's voice came at the other end.

"Yes. Are Commander Scott able to get a transporter lock yet?"

" _Negative_ ," Scotty said. " _Ye have to get them outta that cave._ "

"You're not hypothermic yet," Bones suddenly said. I hadn't even noticed that he had scanned me, being too worried about Jim. "That cut on your forehead needs tending too, you didn't do a good job sealing it up, and there's a number of bruises and frostbites on you too. But nothing urgent."

"Can Captain Kirk be moved?" Spock asked.

"Carefully, yes," Bones replied. The two of them got on either side of the captain and pulled him to his feet, and laid his arms over their shoulders. I helped Sulu pack up our stuff and quickly caught up with the trio slowly making their way towards the howling wind. Jim's head was lolling, he had clearly lost consciousness again. Fear gripped at my heart and the walk out of the cave seemed to take fifty times as long as when Jim and I walked inside.

Finally, Spock and Bones stopped. "Spock to Enterprise. Five to beam up directly to sickbay."

As soon as the howling, bitingly cold wind was replaced by warmth and a sterile smell, several things happened at once. Bones began barking out orders while getting Jim onto a biobed. Sulu took the distress beacon from me and he and Spock hurried out of the room. Nurses ran around with blankets and trays of vials and equipment. One of them herded me onto a biobed too far from Jim, and Bones drew the curtains around his bed so I couldn't even see what was going on. I moved to walk over there, but the nurse pushed on my shoulder and forced me down and put a blanket over me.

"Jim," I tried.

"The captain is being treated," the nurse said. "And you need to get your temperature up."

I glared up at him, but he ignored it. I knew he was right. So, I stopped fighting and tried to relax onto the bed while Doctor M'Benga came over and began scanning me with various devices. He and the nurse exchanged a few words I didn't catch, and then M'Benga began retreating the cut on my forehead and the nurse gave me a hypospray, and that was the last thing I remembered.

* * *

A few days later, I came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel and feeling clean for the first time since before Jim and I left for the conference, it had taken several sonic showers. I had been discharged from Doctor M'Benga's care after just a couple of hours, the cut on my forehead healed properly, frostbites treated and most bruises gone. But Bones kept Jim for two whole days. But then he was finally let out, given a clean bill of health, and under strict orders to take a couple of days off. Which, I figured, is how he had time to set this up.

There, on the table, was the birthday dinner I had asked the chef to make for us.

"Jim? What is this?"

He stood next to the table, looking proud of himself. "I guess my birthday is kind of over, but you seemed disappointed it didn't go the way you had planned. And it sounded really good to have a quiet birthday dinner with just the two of us. So... I did this." His blue eyes were bright and his smile even brighter.

I strode over and wrapped my arms around his neck, looking up into his happy face. "You really are something, James Tiberius. I love you."

"I love you too." He leaned down and gave me a quick kiss, lips so warm and soft.

"And happy belated, handsome. Let me go change and we can eat."

"Do you have to? It'll just take me longer to unwrap you later."

I slipped out of his grasp and hurried away to the bedroom area. "You gotta work for it, Captain," I looked back over my shoulder and winked at him.


End file.
